Remembrance
by I'veGotManyNames
Summary: Three years after they died, Linda returns to Wammy's house to remember the two boys that gave their lives so that Kira could be deafeated. After all, Mello and Matt deserve to be remembered. And that's what Linda will do.


AN: Three years ago, Mello and Matt both took their final breath, and they deserve to be remembered.

Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note.

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Remembrance

A young blonde woman is walking down the path leading towards the old mansion. It's a beautiful sight covered in snow and yet she cannot admire the lovely image, not in the way she would on any other day of the year.

Halfway across the lawn she stops and turns to look at a particularly large tree. It's covered in snow but her mind creates images of that very tree in summer. Every branch full of green leaves and sitting on it are two boys. One with red hair, one with blonde. Their quiet laugh reaches her ears and she can't help but smile a little.

Until she returns to reality and feels tears well up in her eyes. Because the two boys are dead, they died exactly three years ago. One barely twenty, the other never reaching that age. She wipes the tears away and turns towards the mansion again hurriedly walking up the path.

At the door the woman pauses, her hand tracing the intricately carved pattern of the wood. She wasn't here when they left. When the older one left she was still living here but she was sleeping in her room that she shared with a girl named Phillipa. When the younger one left she was eighteen years old already and had left the mansion behind.

And she wasn't here when they died either, though that doesn't really matter, since they didn't die here but in Japan.

The woman enters the mansion. The entrance hall is exactly the way she remembers it. White marble floor, white walls and white columns topped with gold that line the walls of the circular room. In between those columns there are pictures of biblical sceneries. To her right a marble staircase leads up to a balcony overlooking the entrance hall on the first floor. It's completely white. And directly opposite of her is an oak double door slightly smaller than the one she entered through.

She takes neither way instead opting to leave the beautiful entrance hall through a smaller door on her left. It leads to a room lined with jackets and coats along the walls. There are three doors, the one leading to the entrance hall, another one leading to a small room reserved for shoes and a third. Constantly open it leads to a brightly lit hallway.

The woman takes of her coat, it's dark grey, and puts it on a hanger. Then she leaves the room and walks down the hall to what in her mind is still Roger's office and will always be that even now that Roger has left the orphanage and another man has taken his place. She knows him, too. Devon Elliot had started working at the orphanage during her time there.

She knocks.

"Enter" The blonde woman opens the door to reveal a man in his mid-forties. His short brown hair is starting to be streaked with grey but his eyes are still as lively as ever.

"Good Morning, Mr Elliot." She says. Her voice is pleasant and calm, but the latter is a façade and they both know it.

"Ah, Linda. As always, it's a pleasure to see you." He has a kind, deep voice that makes the woman feel at home.

"The pleasure is mine, Mr Elliot" Her smile is charming, but it's not real. Not today.

He smiles, too. A sad little smile that shows how very aware he is of the tragedy that those two boys called their lives.

"You know where everything is, Linda, don't you?" He'd tell her to call him Devon but it's the third year in a row she visits the orphanage on January 26th and he knows she will refuse the offer today.

"Yes. I do." Linda gives up the pretense of happiness as she leaves the room and walks back to the entrance hall.

She enters the dining room behind the double doors and a single tear escapes her eyes. Because there is a single red spot on the white wall opposite of her, and she knows how it got there. She knows so well. It was Mello (who else?), he had gotten into a fight with Rue (one of the other orphans who was three years younger than him) and had thrown a tomato at her. Rue had dodged and the tomato hit the wall instead.

A week later Mello had left the orphanage. Roger had wanted to get rid of the tomato stain but Matt had not left the dining room for a week just to protect the reminder of Mello, so Roger had conceded.

A sad little smile flits across her face. She sometimes wishes she could go back in time and change everything. Maybe save L along the way, but certainly save Mello and Matt.

She sighs and shakes her head. It doesn't matter, because going back in time is impossible and it's foolish to even think about it.

Linda turns back and makes her way into the entrance hall again. She remembers the reunion of 2005 and the shock Matt gave them all. She remembers hearing Natasha's screams as she passed the entrance hall to get blankets. "You promised," the blonde had screamed again and again. Another tear.

The woman walks up the stairs slowly and with every step it gets harder to see what's before her as her eyes fill themselves with tears. She makes no attempt to wipe them away; she knows that it's useless.

On the second floor Linda stops her ascension to take a look at the lounge room. There are several pictures on the walls. Uncolored drawings. Linda knows them. She knows them well, since she was the one who drew them.

There is a drawing of everyone that was at Wammy's in 2000, Mello and Near at opposite ends of the group with Matt right next to Mello. Dawn and Holly, numbers four and five in the ranking¸ are in the middle of the group. There's Puma and Phillipa with matching grins on their faces standing near Mello and Matt. And finally she spots Natasha towards the middle of the group, but closer to Near. Had she drawn this any later then she did (in summer 2004) she would have placed Natasha on Matt's other side. There are so many others, the drawing shows a grand total of 19 students from six to 16, not all of them are where she would have placed them when she thinks back on it now, but none is quite as misplaced as Natasha. Then again the younger blonde is rather unpredictable.

She looks at another drawing. This one is one of her favorites. It shows Matt and Natasha sitting on a couch in this very room in deep conversation. She smiles sadly. This is something that will never happen again.

Another drawing. This one shows Near setting up a domino chain that could possibly grow to circle around the room more than once. Could, because Mello is lurking in the background, and he's quite angry. Linda shakes her head. That's a day she remembers quite vividly.

She looks around some more, but can't find the drawing she is searching for and leaves the room again.

When she doesn't meet anyone in the hallway for a second time, she starts to wonder what's going on until she realizes that at this time all the orphans would be in class.

Linda sighs. Maybe it's good that they aren't here right now. It wouldn't be the most encouraging thing in the world to meet a crying woman in the hallway, after all.

She reaches the fourth floor and takes a deep breath, before she makes her way over to the room Mello and Matt shared so many years ago.

"Eight years," she whispers. "Eight years, one month, two weeks and six days."

She walks slowly; carefully thinking about every single step and one hand trailing along the wall. The blonde stops in front of the door, closes her eyes for a second and sighs.

"Eight years," she repeats. "One month. Two weeks. Six days."

"Fourteen hours. Thirteen minutes. Seventeen seconds," a voice says from behind Linda. She whirls around.

It's Natasha. A tear slips out of the younger blonde's eye. "Three years. Two hours. Twenty minutes. Thirteen seconds."

Another tear. "Three years. One minute. Four seconds."

Linda reaches out and takes her hand. Her own grief must be next to nothing compared to Natasha's.

"How… how are you?" Her voice is breaking throughout the whole sentence, all self-control she had while at Roger's office gone.

"I could be better." Natasha looks down and another tear falls from her left eye.

Linda nods slowly. She takes the younger woman's hand and opens the door with the other one. The room has barely changed, since the last time she's seen it. Her eyes tear up again.

"It's still the same," she whispers.

Natasha nods. "I fought tooth and nail for that." She looks down. "Sometimes I don't know if it was worth it, but then I think about what it would feel like to know that there is no piece of them left inside this room…" She bites her lip.

Linda trails her finger along the wall. "Does it hurt?" she asks quietly. "Coming in here?" Because this is the first time Linda herself had the courage to enter this room.

"Every single day," Natasha closes her eyes.

"You go in here every day?" Natasha nods and Linda can feel her eyes widen. They she frowns.

"Natasha, you're 19." Linda's confusion is clear. And it's understandable. All orphans are supposed to leave Wammy's house on their 18th birthday at the latest.

"I wasn't ready to leave, yet," Natasha says. "So I'm working here, now."

"What are you doing?" Linda asks. Anything to take her mind of the two boys that were the last occupants of this room.

"I'm screening the kids. Seeing who'd be able to deal with the emotional pressure of helping L. Because who is going to be L, is still entirely up to Near. And I'm pretty sure he already made his decision."

Linda nods slightly. "Orion," she mutters, as she looks around again.

There is a small difference, she notices. A picture frame on one of the walls that wasn't there before. She steps closer. It's the picture she was missing earlier.

It's a picture of Mello and Matt sleeping on the ground in this room. She remembers sneaking into their room in the middle of the night to draw this. She had never intended to share it with anyone, but when Mello left, she felt that she should give it to Matt. When he left, the picture had been put up in the lounge room. Now, it's hanging in this room and Linda thinks that it's the first place it really belongs to.

Linda starts sobbing and Natasha reaches out a hand carefully to touch her shoulder.

"Let's go outside," the younger whispers. "One can only take so much."

The taller woman is almost too glad to get out of there as she tries to take a deep breath. Tries and fails. Tries again. And fails again. Tries… and finally, finally manages.

Natasha takes Linda's hand, and carefully pulls her out of the room.

"Outside," Linda says belatedly. "Outside sounds good." Her voice is shaking and her body is, too, but she pulls herself together, and follows the younger woman.

The older is watching her companion as they walk down the stairs back towards the coat room, and notices that she is not the only one who is shaking like a leaf in the rough October wind.

Linda picks up her coat and puts it on. When she turns around again, Natasha is standing in the door.

And for a moment the older can't move, can't breathe, can't speak.

Natasha is wearing a black leather coat with a high collar that makes it impossible to say how long her hair (that is falling down her back) really is. The light is hitting her at just the right angle, from the left, but also slightly from behind, and it makes her cheekbones look sharper, more pronounced. All of her features look less feminine in this light. And her eyes… her eyes lose all the grayish hues they normally possess and look simply blue. Ice blue.

If she were a little taller, Linda would have thought, Mello was standing in the door. But it's not Mello. It's Natasha.

Still, the older woman is in a daze as they leave the manor. She isn't trembling anymore. She's almost scarily calm as the nineteen year old leads the way. Down the front steps, and across the snow covered lawn. Neither of them knows where exactly they are going, but they find themselves in a spot that means a lot to the younger.

"It was right here, you know," Natasha says quietly.

"What was?" Linda looks at her questioningly.

"This is where he was lying. Matt, I mean. Like an angel," her voice is trembling slightly, but she doesn't seem to notice. "He looked so peaceful, for once. I've never seen him that relaxed, either before or after that. He was pale. More than usual. Almost like snow." She laughs bitterly. "His hair looked like blood. His face was as pale as snow. And his pullover was as black as ebony. That's actually what I thought in that moment." She takes a shaky breath, and Linda realizes how hard it is for her to talk about that night. "Even today, I think of it as a twisted version of Snow White."

"Was it hard?" the older asks.

"To trust him after that? After he broke his promise like that?" she pauses, "It should have been. But it wasn't. I looked at him differently, of course, but I had always known that he was capable of… that."

They stand in silence for a few minutes, before Natasha reaches a hand into her pocket and wordlessly offers Linda a piece of chocolate.

She looks at the chocolate and then at her companion several times, before finally making eye contact with the other. They stare at each other for a moment, two, three.

Natasha breaks first. She sinks to the ground sobbing uncontrollably. Linda kneels down next to her and puts an arm around her shoulders, but she, too, is crying.

That's how Orion finds them about an hour later. Arms wrapped around each other and crying like it's all they have left. And he knows that today it is.

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Please let me know what you think.

Thanks for reading.


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